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Jane Golden and Seth Rozin's mission: Partner up on a play that tells prisoners' stories. Their method: Interview "life-term" inmates at the State Correctional Institution at Graterford and to use those chats for a theater piece that details the experience of the sorrowful and the saved.

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A young veteran of the music scene, Meghan Remy performs under the curiously plural moniker U.S. Girls. The "band" is just her and a whole mess of equipment: microphones, a busted drum machine, a failing four-track, an old reel-to-reel player and other less-than-cutting-edge electronic devices.

Spoon might just be the most reliable franchise in indie rock. Transference is just like the previous seven albums: clean-cut but ballsy, uptempo but not even a little bit aggro. Guitar, bass, drums, keys, singer Britt Daniel's fine rasp — everybody's on the same page, synched up, interlocking.

The Boston metal band Junius, whose superb The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist has the frustrating distinction of arriving too late to qualify for any best-of-year lists, is indeed among the more precise and scientific of recent hard rock bands.

There's something for everyone: For traditionalists there are wonderful, inspired versions of standards like God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,O Come All Ye Faithful and O Holy Night, as well as Marianne Faithfull, who sounds like she's been hitting the egg nog pretty hard.

When we heard that the Dead Milkmen were officially back in the picture -- playing shows, making new music -- and blowing it out with a big Halloween bas, we gave frontman Rodney Anonymous a word count and set him free.